E-mails contained in new court documents contradict claims by Colorado’s best known gun-rights advocate and suggest he and staff from two gun groups were engaged in a political attack campaign that is now the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Dudley Brown,executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and an executive with the National Association for Gun Rights, said the work on the campaign pieces was strictly volunteer.

“Both groups ONLY work on gun issues, though all of our staff care about other issues and are free (heck, encouraged) to volunteer their time on the political causes they care about,” Brown said in an e-mail Thursday to The Denver Post.

But e-mails that were sought in the lawsuit and recently made public show that Brown’s communication in 2012 to the Virginia firm that paid for and lent its name to the mailers came from both of Brown’s e-mail accounts with the gun groups.

In his missives, Brown outlined the battle over a civil- unions bill underway in the legislature and proposed sending campaign mailers featuring a photograph of two men kissing.

The gay couple featured in the literature is suing the Virginia firm in U.S. District Court in Denver for using their copyrighted engagement picture.

“My staff and I would do all the work, but we’d want (the firm) to sign off, put its name on the dotted line and pay for the mailings,” Brown wrote.

Asked Friday about the e-mails, Brown responded that he doesn’t have a private e-mail address and uses work e-mails for personal business. He also said use of his word “staff” means his staffers who were volunteering “of their own free will.”

Brown — once described by an National Rifle Association member as “the Al Sharpton of gun politics” — has been a visible fixture at the Capitol this year trying to stop Democratic gun-control bills, but over the years he also has tangled with fellow Republicans on social issues, too.

“Dudley Brown is a modern-day charlatan who operates in the shadows and portrays himself as a supposed ‘Christian’ but lies, cheats and steals, using the people who are naive enough to believe and financially support him,” said former Rep. B.J. Nikkel, a Loveland Republican. “He and his ‘gang’ operate as political terrorists, and I hope this federal lawsuit finally exposes him for the dishonest person that he is.”

Brown jokingly asked, “Who?” when asked about Nikkel’s comments, then added via e-mail, “Oh. Forgot about her. As did, I think, everyone involved in politics (about halfway through her term).”

But Nikkel, who left office in January, was clearly on Brown’s mind, according to one 2012 e-mail dated May 7, the day before the House was to take up a bill allowing gay couples to form civil unions. Republicans refused to call up the bill, which died during a wild night on the House floor.

In the communication, Brown called Nikkel a “turncoat,” and said her “yes” vote on the bill in a House committee had kept civil unions alive. He also bragged how he had “staff members” and friends perform a “lit drop” at her church the previous day, using fliers to urge parishoners to call her.

In that same e-mail, he included attachments of the kissing-gays mailers.

Neither mentioned guns.

One targeted Sen. Jean White, R-Hayden, who had voted for the civil-unions bill. The other blistered a Republican House candidate, Jeff Hare, running for an open Weld County seat, saying “he’s joining Denver’s liberal attack on marriage.” Both lost their primary races.

The e-mails were turned over by Public Advocate of the United States, the firm that sent the mailers. The conservative group supports legislation to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

Based on information in the e-mails, attorneys for the couple and their photographer have asked for an extension to complete their investigation.

More in Politics

Ford Motor Co. is going ahead with plans to move small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico despite President-elect Donald Trump’s recent threats to impose tariffs on companies that move work abroad.

Donald Trump’s administration, already seen as the wealthiest in modern history, is about to get even richer when Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Gary Cohn is named the president-elect’s chief economic policy adviser.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani formally withdrew from consideration for a post in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration Friday, putting an end to his ill-fated bid to lead the State Department.